♦ ULTIMATE–The First Five Decades, Vol. I & II (1968-2018) – $79.00 plus shipping(If you want both Volumes, this has a lower shipping cost then ordering them separately.)

Only use this page if you are a DiscNY community memberIf you want to order more than 4 books, please email me.
Allow 2 weeks for delivery. Cannot ship to a PO Box.No international shipments at this time. Sorry.

About the New Ultimate History Books

The first volume is a reprint of the highly acclaimed first history book, ULTIMATE – The First Four Decades, highlighting the history of ultimate from 1968-2004. The new, second volume is a continuation of the first book, highlighting how ultimate has advanced from 2005-2018 and looking toward what is in store for the future of the sport.

Vol. II was expanded to 224 pages with over 200 photos. You wouldn’t think just 14 years would have a lot to cover, but what an amazing time period:
– UPA to USAU
– Tom Crawford is Hired
– Triple Crown Tour Begins
– Semi-Pro Leagues are Born… and Die
– Local Leagues Grow Exponentially
– Gender Equity Backlash
– Expansion of the Masters Division
– College Division Grows and Adds D-III
– Youth Division Explodes
– Ultimate Expands Around the Globe
– and much more…

You may be surprised how much you didn’t know happened… or at least the details you didn’t know about. And of course it covers much of what happened on the field especially at the National Championships. Over 600 players and over 200 teams are highlighted plus a huge gallery of the best photos taken over the past 14 years is included.

Additionally, a third book, Vol. III, covering the history of the Disc, Rules & SOTG and the Hall of Fame will be available as an “eBook” in late June 2019.

It takes a village to publish books like these. Fortunately the ultimate community is the perfect place to ask for and find all the help you need. I hope you like how the book looks because it takes amazing talent and a huge amount of effort to produce a great looking coffee-table style book. And Jason Wedekind is the perfect guy for the job. His company Genghis Kern Letterpress & Design in Denver is a ‘magic shop’ where ideas go in and beautiful results come out.

I also hope you like all the photos in the book. You wouldn’t believe how much time, effort and creativity it takes to find and select them. But the ultimate village had the perfect person – William ‘Brody’ Brotman.

Of course the core of a history book is the words. Writers start with research, then interviews, then racking their brains how to develop a story worthy of the people who lived them, and then comes the hard part… putting words to paper (or computer). The book writers all live in the ultimate village, and they all understand how wonderful our sport is and how important it is to document the history so it is not lost:Kevin Cramer William ‘Bunny’ Bartram Will Deaver Dan ‘Stork’ Roddick Kyle Weisbrod Heather Ann Brauer Suzanne Fields Isaac ‘Ike’ SaulRobert ‘Nob’ Rauch Michelle ‘Chip’ Chang

Then comes the work to smooth out the chapters so the book tells an interesting story rather than seem like unconnected bits of writing. That’s the job of the editor. Steve Sullivan has been doing it for a long time, and this book benefitted from his talents.

Before the book is ready for the printer, the technical work of finding all the errors falls on the copyeditor and finally the proofreader. Elisabeth Bowman is the best copyeditor I’ve ever known. And Madeline Barbier was a real find to do the final proofreading. Last comes the index thanks to the team at Scholarly Indexing.

Please join me in thanking all these people. But before you turn the page, there is one more group in the ultimate village that made this book possible – the financial backers. Without Andrea ‘Andy’ Cummis, Chris Fletcher, David Leiwant, Doug Propp, Robert ‘Nob’ Rauch, Dan ‘Stork’ Roddick, Henry Thorne and Geoff West these books would not exist.